8 Ways to Improve Your Outlook
Your outlook is one of the most critical possessions you have. People with a positive outlook regularly feel happier and more hopeful. The question is, how do you move from an outlook entrenched in negativity to one built from optimism?
Recognize Your Power
Some people feel like their outlook in an ingrained characteristic that is assigned to them from birth. They believe they cannot change their outlook just as they cannot change their eye color.
This view is extremely problematic because it encourages you to stay trapped in your current mindset while you wait for external factors to improve your outlook. In reality, people have tremendous amounts of power and control over their outlook.
Your perceptions are flexible and able to be modified in endless ways, which help to promote a new point of view. To move forward with the possibility of changing your outlook, you must first realize that the power to change begins with you.
Accept Your Limitations
Developing your improved outlook has everything to do with viewing past, present, and future situations from a more positive point of view. There are limitations to this plan, though.
Finding a new outlook will not erase unwanted life events from your memory or make painful childhood memories vanish. Expecting to do so will leave you feeling frustrated and angry in your attempts at improvement.
Those events are facts. Facts cannot be removed, but they can receive a makeover. This is accomplished by searching for glimmers of meaning in difficult times and searching for silver linings in the darkest clouds.
Seek Out Fun
Now that you have adequately prepared your mind for the possibility of improvement, you can begin to change your body. This is accomplished through a series of behavioral changes that move you closer to having fun and away from feeling sad and hopeless.
Rather than waiting for your outlook to improve before you have fun, this approach changes your outlook by having fun. Contrary to your current view, fun is easy to find.
You may feel like the social effects of osteoporosis will hinder you, but it's in your control. Go new places. Have new experiences. Attempt what you have not yet attempted.
Staying in a rut of behaviors will not allow your outlook to change. As long as you avoid negative coping skills like alcohol and other drugs, what you do for fun is not important. The positive outcomes are all that matter.
Invite Fun People
Take a look at the people you interact with on a regular basis. Are they fun, optimistic, and upbeat, or are they a group mired in misery?
The company you surround yourself with has a way of rubbing off on you. You can take the lead with your current group to shift towards more fun, or you could seek out new, like-minded people that are more interested in excitement and enjoyment.
Having pleasant interactions with friendly people will pull your outlook away from the negative and towards the positive.
Eat Mindfully
A significant portion of improving your outlook centers around finding pleasure. Too often, people utilize negative coping skills like alcohol and other drug use to provide artificially high levels of pleasure.
Whether these substances are legal or not, they can result in more negativity. A better option for increasing pleasure is mindful eating.
Every week you head to the grocery store to carefully select the foods you plan to eat as a part of your osteoporosis diet, but do you actually enjoy the process of eating? Many people eat in a flurry during their busy day, or they eat mindlessly in front of the TV at night.
Mindful eating focuses your efforts on seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, and tasting your food in a way that emphasizes the gratification of the experience. Next time you eat, sit down to patiently experience and enjoy your food. Your improved outlook will be your reward.
Find the Beauty
Perhaps there is no clearer way to improve your outlook than to find the beauty around you. Of course, the world is a scary, dangerous, and damaging place at times, but the magnificence of nature and the kindness of people will always balance out the equation.
It may seem like there are more negatives, but this is due to the sources of your information. Any time your outlook seems grim, go outside.
Even on the darkest, rainy days, there are amazing sights to behold like the way the winds push the clouds across the sky or how the drops of rain ripple in the puddles. Taking time to find the beauty each day will remind you that your poor outlook isn’t accurate.
Change the Dialogue
Anytime you want to change how you feel about a topic, you should take a look at your internal dialogue. This is called your self-talk. It happens continuously throughout the day and drastically impacts your mood, levels of anxiety, and your behaviors.
Making statements like “life stinks" and “I give up" speak directly to negativity. To improve your outlook, you should find ways to improve your self-talk.
Begin by noticing the declarations that you make throughout the day. Then, you can begin to reduce the repetition of the ones that worsen your outlook and increase the repetition of those that improve it. It may seem foreign to think about your thoughts, but it is helpful skill that can improve more than just your outlook.
Stay Consistent to Persevere
Any of these measures can drastically improve your outlook. When paired and grouped together, they can bolster the impact of the next, but no strategy can be successful unless it is done with consistency.
It took you many years to develop your negative outlook. The changes will not come rapidly. They will be a series of small battles that eventually will appear as a major victory.
It takes time and can be easily undone. Just a few negative thoughts or a few hours around a pessimist can unravel much of the work on which you have been focused. With consistency and perseverance, the outlook you want is yours to have.